


An essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale

by loveinadoorway



Category: True Blood
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-12 00:12:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveinadoorway/pseuds/loveinadoorway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>LJ comment_fic prompt by classics_lover:  any, any/any, ambergris<br/>Title from Melville, Moby Dick</p>
            </blockquote>





	An essence found in the inglorious bowels of a sick whale

He had seen so many deaths in his time, many of them caused by stupidity, ignorance or superstition.

His little piece of tail for the night had lit some incense and the underlying bite of ambergris had taken him back to plague-ravaged Paris in the middle ages.  
The stench of death underneath the fragrance was the next thing he remembered and amid the clamor of carts carrying corpses out of town, priests mumbling prayers and charlatans hawking supposed cures, Eric saw the face, just like he had more than 600 years ago.  
A rich man, clutching his ball of ambergris, an expression of outrage on his face. The expensive commodity was supposed to protect him, yet there were plague boils all over him. Did the man know he was dying? Maybe.

Eric had smiled at the richly clad figure sitting in the muck, all fangs and wicked glee at the other man’s mortality and the idiocy of putting his faith in a ball of whale puke. The man had crossed himself repeatedly and Eric had hunkered down in front of him.  
He had kept on smiling until the man’s eyes had rolled back in his head.  
  
Afterwards, Eric had kept on walking until he had left the stink of the city behind him. On a farm, he had found a healthy girl, who had provided both sport and sustenance. Back in those days, he had always killed when he fed. Always. Just not that night. The plump little farm girl had survived. On a whimsy, he had not even glamoured her. Let her know she had danced with death and survived.

Men, he pondered in the luxury of a bedroom he only used for fornication, had put their faith in altogether weirder things during the long years of his life. He hadn’t understood the ambergris, nor did he understand the carpenter on a cross.

Eric sighed. What a perfectly lovely train of thought to have, when only seconds before he had been getting ready to fuck the everloving daylight out of… Mandy? Candy? Tandy? He’d be damned if he remembered. Not that it mattered, anyhow.  
“Put that stinky shit out and let some air into the room,” he snarled at her. “And why are you still wearing clothes?”


End file.
